Wellington Bishops Palace (The Gatehouse Record)

Also known as, or recorded in historical documents as;
The Court; Wellington House

In the civil parish of Wellington.
In the historic county of Somerset.
Modern Authority of Somerset.
1974 county of Somerset.
Medieval County of Somerset.

OS Map Grid Reference: ST13562049
Latitude 50.97839° Longitude -3.23216°

Wellington Bishops Palace has been described as a Palace although is doubtful that it was such.

There are no visible remains.

Description

The medieval bishops of Bath and Wells had a residence in Wellington which may have been the precursor to late Tudor building found at the Court. (Derived from Somerset HER)

The identification of Wellington, another manor of the bishopric's Domesday estate, as the location of a manor house of the bishops of Bath and Wells is based on evidence from the bishops' registers. An ordinance of Bishop William Bytton I was dated at the town in 1248. John Drokensford dated four of his register entries at Wellington, including one signed "in camera." Ralph of Shrewsbury dated a small number of documents at Wellington." Aston and Leech state that the medieval bishops of Bath and Wells had a court house at Wellington, probably the surviving fifteenth century Court in Mantle Street." It seems that the bishops did not have a residence here, but that they had provided a small manor house where the local court was held. Wellington is close to Wiveliscombe, where there is known to have been an episcopal residence, and this was probably where the bishop was staying on the dates when documents were dated at Wellington. (Payne 2003)

Sources of information, references and further reading

County Historic Environment Record (or Sites and Monuments Record) number(s) 43716.

Books
- Aston, M. and Leech, R., 1977, Historic towns in Somerset (Bristol: Committee for Rescue Archaeology in Avon, Gloucestershire and Somerset) p. 143, 146
Other sources: Theses; 'grey' literature; in-house reports; unpublished works; etc.
- Payne, Naomi, 2003, The medieval residences of the bishops of Bath and Wells, and Salisbury (PhD Thesis University of Bristol) p. 155-6 (available via EThOS)
  Payne, N., 1999, The residences of the medieval Bishops of Bath and Wells (unpubl MA dissertation, Bristol)

Most of the sites or buildings recorded in this web site are NOT open to the public and permission to visit a site must always be sought from the landowner or tenant.
It is an offence to disturb a Scheduled Monument without consent. It is a destruction of everyone's heritage to remove archaeological evidence from ANY site without proper recording and reporting.
Don't use metal detectors on historic sites without authorisation.

The information on this web page may be derived from information compiled by and/or copyright of Historic England, County Historic Environment Records and other individuals and organisations. It may also contain information licensed under the Open Government Licence. All the sources given should be consulted to identify the original copyright holder and permission obtained from them before use of the information on this site for commercial purposes.
The author and compiler of Gatehouse does not receive any income from the site and funds it himself. The information within this site is provided freely for educational purposes only.

The bibliography owes much to various bibliographies produced by John Kenyon for the Council for British Archaeology, the Castle Studies Group and others.

Suggestions for finding online and/or hard copies of bibliographical sources can be seen at this link.
Minor archaeological investigations, such as watching brief reports, and some other 'grey' literature is most likely to be held by H.E.R.s but is often poorly referenced and is unlikely to be recorded here, or elsewhere, but some suggestions can be found here.

The possible site or monument is represented on maps as a point location. This is a guide only. It should be noted that OS grid references defines an area, not a point location. In practice this means the actual center of the site or monument may often, but not always, be to the North East of the point shown. Locations derived from OS grid references and from latitude longitiude may differ by a small distance.
Further information on mapping and location can be seen at this link.

Please help to make this as useful a resource as possible by contacting Gatehouse if you see errors, can add information or have suggestions for improvements in functality and design.
Help is acknowledged.

Data >		County HER
Maps >	Streetmap	NLS maps	Where's the path	Old-Maps
Data/Maps >	Magic	V. O. B.	Geology	LiDAR	Open Domesday
Air Photos >	Bing Maps	Google Maps	Getmapping	ZoomEarth
Photos >	CastleFacts	Geograph	Flickr	Panoramio